The Greatest Stories Ever Told

Sunshine Lies - Matthew Sweet (mp3)
God's Got It - The Black Crowes (mp3)

A man has a story. The story changes lives. It changes the way entire groups of people deal with situations, with other people, with themselves. It reroutes armies.

But wait.

You begin to realize this story is not entirely true. You begin to realize that the man, the storyteller, knowingly embellished or even fictionalized a portion of this story. And yet, parts of the story remain true, and its telling has unquestionably affected people for good, and its ripple effect of positivity cannot be questioned.

How big must the lies be before they become inexcusable, before the good accomplished is eclipsed by the interwoven acts of deception?

If you think I’m talking about Greg Mortenson and Three Cups of Tea, you’re only partly right. I could also be talking about Joseph Smith, or L. Ron Hubbard, or some could even say I’m talking about Jesus Christ himself.

60 Minutes did its expose, complete with damning info from investigative studpuppy Jon Krakauer. It took a few days of follow-up shock in newspapers and blogs, and then the invevitable backlash to the backlash began. If you read the comments section of the 60 Minutes link, a majority of the 376 (and counting) commenters are incensed that the show dared to investigate such a great hero.

That Mortenson has been the central figure in acts that have positively changed the lives of hundreds of people, possibly thousands, is indisputable. But couldn’t the same be said of Scientology? Or Latter Day Saints? Or Christianity?

Sure, we can all talk about how these religions have caused problems or used deceptive practices or whatever, but it's also indisputable that they have positively changed the lives of thousands if not millions. Does all that positivity that make the Original Sin of foundational lies OK?

As a Christian, obviously, I don’t believe Jesus was a liar. As a non-Mormon and non-Scientologist, I believe Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard very much were. Such is the unavoidable dividing line between believers and skeptics. Faith often requires us to believe true that which is difficult to accept as true.

But with Greg Mortenson... at the very least he tells convenient half-truths, and he (er, his organization) mishandles more money in a month than most of us see in a year, and he gets his ego stroked by reporters, military generals, politicians, and untold thousands of Americans and poor foreigners.

Disclosure: This story hits very close to home.

Two years ago, a nearby school, a school my daughters will soon attend, put most of its focus on fundraising to help Mortenson’s organization build a school for girls in Afghanistan. They raised over $60,000. Mortenson even came to the school and spoke to them. Now there’s serious doubt the school was ever built, and even if it was, there’s doubt it’s being used as a school and not sitting empty or being used for storage.

When these students saw or were told about the 60 Minutes report, you can only imagine how devastated they were. Mortenson's defenders may be right in part -- we don’t know the extent of Mortenson’s deceptions and incompetencies -- but even the true believer must accept that he has overstated his accomplishments and understated his own profiteering. The most common defense: surely there are worse people out there for journalists to investigate.

Do the schools Mortenson actually built that have real girls in them excuse that he or his organization mishandled this school's $60,000, money raised for a specific purpose that was never met? If Bernie Madoff started a world-changing charitable foundation with the millions he bilked from unwitting investors, does that make him less of a thief?

I find myself fairly ripped apart by these questions. I don’t like having to ask them, and I don’t like the answers my heart and head offer back. Instead I think of The Watchmen, and about Serenity, and many great works of more traditional literature that suggest that large-scale lies and cover-ups in the name of the Greater Good are never, ever OK.

Times like these, I wish reality were as easy as fiction. Is our sin here in making a hero out of a human, or is the sin that the human insisted on believing too much of his own hype? Can we ever get far enough past our own miserable flaws to do truly heroic things for very long, or if we keep flying, are we destined to eventually find ourselves a little too close to the sun?

Blood-Stained Badges In The Dirt

Michelle Rhee is a hated woman. She went into a system almost paralyzed under the weight of politics and pressures and stirred the genesis of a revolution.

I have no doubt that she made a lot of mistakes. Outwardly, she has all the warmth and compassion of a Transformer. In her and Adrian Fenty's amazing Wall Street Journal "Education Manifesto," Rhee admits she should have done a better job at communicating her goals, her hopes, her intentions, to the parties most invested and at risk under her fiefdom. Rhee might have failed to win them over no matter what, but she should have tried harder regardless.

What is already clear, however, and what cannot be reasonably denied, is that Michelle Rhee has forever changed the educational landscape in what has long been the worst educational district in this country. She is a modern-day Pale Rider or the Wyatt Earp of Tombstone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if ol’ Clint one day directs a movie about her.

Rhee (1) is brilliant; (2) was convicted about her responsibilities; and (3) was willing to put her career on the line. She walked into the saloon, a big ol’ 10-gallon hat shading her face, a steady hand on the butt of her trusty six-shooter, and politely told the drunkards she was the new sheriff in town.

Before she showed up, the numbers were in all ways horrifying. The numbers indicated the educational equivalent of a post-apocalyptic landscape of bandits, marauders, and hopeless helpless innocents hiding in their homes and eating scraps the mice left behind.

Today, the numbers are still horrifying. But noticeably and indubitably less horrifying than they used to be. It went from the Black Knight without arms and legs and bleeding to death to a Black Knight with one arm, more confidently asserting that “I’m getting bettah.” And Rhee is the catalyst for those improvements.

Michelle Rhee is an old school classic hero of the sort the 21st Century doesn’t accept and might not even want. She chose a thankless career.

Three years later, she is (temporarily) unemployed. Go to any story about Rhee on educationweek.com, and you will most certainly find dozens of teachers across the country – good, dedicated, intelligent people – writing about her as if she might well be the Antichrist. They question her motives. They question her “success.”

And good for them. She deserves scrutiny and skepticism. But in a decade, the educational history books will point to this moment and her role in it and say, “Rhee’s tenure in D.C. was the tipping point of what would become largest educational reform movement in over a century.”

Part II:

Take everything I just wrote about Michelle Rhee and education, and you can replace her with Barack Obama, and you can replace education with health care.

Thirty years from now, the way our government and our corporations handle health care will be drastically different from what it is today. It will be almost nothing like the plans Obama’s legislation intends for it to become.

Barack Obama was elected captain of the Titanic. When it comes to health care in this country, we’ve been aiming straight at an iceberg for 50 years. Almost every sane person in this idiotic country admits that the system is powerfully flawed and getting worse. A dude finally comes along and turns the steering wheel, and everyone screams at him.

They say the plan is flawed. Fine, and true.

But what they hate about Obama is that his solution isn’t their solution. Nevermind that they never had a solution until he forced them to make some shit up on the fly.

Thirty years from now, when health care in this country is drastically and measurably better than it is today – more affordable, no longer the responsibility of employers, and probably less tolerant of high-cost end-of-life treatments – we will look back at Obama’s health care law as the catalyst. They will say, “He got a lot of things wrong, but damn if he didn’t force the evolution to begin when no one else had the guts. And if he didn’t take that first step, we never get to where we are today.”

In reality, heroes don’t get everything right. In reality, heroes rarely get medals or adulation until after they’ve been martyred or marginalized. Real heroes are willing to risk more than the rest of us to achieve what everyone says they want but no one has the balls to do. Neither of these people did it alone, but they were the cornerstones of the effort, and their sense of conviction is what pulled many to their cause.

I don’t have to admire every detail of Rhee’s education reform to exalt her courage to spearhead it in the first place. I don’t like half of Obama’s health care legislation, but I absolutely glorify his risking a career’s worth of political capital to force change.

Rhee and Obama are currently facing the fate of heroes. They are being castigated, stoned, and despised by the very people they aim to help.

Such is the cost of heroism in the real world.

The Day the Peach Basket Died

Hope for the Hopeless - A Fine Frenzy (mp3)
Find You Dead - Letters to Cleo (mp3)

It somehow seems only fitting to follow up Bob's post yesterday with musings on John Wooden.

While I was busy trying to navigate the vomit-inducing highway to Boone, N.C., the Wizard of Westwood chose to retire from life, calling it a day at the nicely-rounded age of 99.

That night, the ritual late-night drunken debate between myself and my two in-law siblings centered around Tiger Woods. While I didn't begrudge Tiger his loss of income or popularity, I did say the onus is on our society to change what it expects of people in the spotlight. (Lest it be forgotten, I was a staunch -- and somewhat erroneous -- defender of Tiger when he first wrecked his SUV last year. I've adjusted my negative opinions of him, but continue to place equal blame with our culture.)

Bob's post yesterday about Polanski, and his earlier post about Bruce Springsteen's adulterous ways, and my mourning the death of the simple hero. I don't know how many times I've lamented our society's idolization of celebrities and athletes. When we place any fallible mortal on a pedestal, we're only creating a greater height from which they can fall. Deep down, we know it, but we don't care. We need our heroes, and we'll help craft them where they don't exist.

You gotta admire the Greeks for that, at least. Their gods were terribly flawed. Powerful, certainly, but flawed. In America, we expect all our gods to be flawless.

In my preferred universe, Tiger Woods would earn significant cash simply for being The Greatest Golfer of All Time. But the hundreds of millions in endorsements? The entire notion of celebrities endorsing products, values, whatever? It wouldn't happen.

What is undeniable, however, is how much more fun it is for people to talk about fallen idols than straight-laced boring ones. Like John Wooden.

The Wizard didn't make much off endorsements, but I'm sure he made a few extra bucks every now and then. Enough to buy Tiger a new driver on occasion.

I don't know everything about John Wooden's life. I don't know if he went his entire life without committing a sin. I don't know if the sins he committed were acceptable or unforgivable. I don't want to know everything; I know enough to admire the man, his career, the loyalty and love he engendered in almost everyone he met, and the values he seemed to espouse through actions as well as words.

Wooden actually seems like something we just don't hear much about anymore: A decent Christian man.

We hear plenty about Catholic priests and perverted Protestant preachers. We hear lots of people talk about God's wrath until they conveniently need His forgiveness for their own misdeeds. But just good decent people who admit to their faith in the glare of the public eye? That's a rare species.

As a UNC alum whose fanaticism about the importance of Dean Smith as a coach and person of tremendous character is beyond reasonable, I can also comfortably acknowledge that John Wooden is, as both a person and coach, Dean's equal if not his superior. (It hurts to even write that.)

Then there's the personal story that tugs at me.

Wooden's wife Nellie died on March 21, 1985. At the time of her death, they had been married 53 years. On the monthly anniversary of Nellie's death, every month, every year, for 25 years, Coach John Wooden would write his wife a letter. That's almost 300 love letters to a ghost. If it weren't such a testament to the depth and endurance of his love, it might well freak me out. But he didn't write those letters to impress me. And I'm sure he wouldn't give a flip whether anyone thought he was crazy for doing it.

Instead of a secret stash of kiddie porn or some secret meth lab in his basement, John Wooden was hiding love letters to the most important person in his life. Because it was none of our business, no matter how much it might have impressed us. How refreshing, that we discover something unknown yet touching about a man we can admire!

Apparently, good secrets about people still exist, and it gives me hope.

"You see, the truth is somewhere in between. It's wrong to turn people into idols. But it's also wrong to lose hope, to believe that we can't find good examples to inspire us," Wooden says in the interview linked above. "We need role models. ... Maybe role models are getting harder to find, these days. That doesn't mean that there aren't any worth finding."

Coach Wooden almost gives me reason to think maybe idolizing great and successful famous people isn't such a bad idea.

Almost.

To Be a Young Fisher of Concussed Men

All Kinds of Time - Fountains of Wayne (mp3)
Only the Young - Journey (mp3)

It's the moment when sports become this beautiful, transcendent better-than-the-real-world thing.

Compared to 99% of people in Tennessee, I'm not much of a Titans fan. Their head coach, Jeff Fisher, is worth every bit of good ol' Southern admiration anyone can muster. That moustache. Hair that has greyed, bit after bit, as he became the Great Patriarch of Tennessee Football once Philip Fulmer's reign disintegrated like King Lear's.

In October, the mumbles began claiming Fisher had seen his last year as the Titans coach. The owner pulled rank and demanded that his QB in the wings, Vince Young, have a shot at the starting job. Fisher bristled.

Young, as we all knew here in Tennessee, had lost his stinkin' mind a couple of years ago. He practically held dogfights in his own head, a Vick stuck in his own mental prison. He was done as a pro. Stick several forks in him for good measure. Might as well collect his contract buyout and start doing local ads in Texas like Tim Couch does in Kentucky. His mind-blowing performance over USC at the helm of the Longhorns offered him more immortality than most humans earn, so he was going to have to settle for cashing in on those glory days for the rest of his life. Let's be honest: there are worse fates, right? Than being fawned over by millions of people who wear 10-gallon hats and Remember the Alamo?

It's not like Vince was a hated or even disliked athlete. People didn't badmouth him. We just all kind of thought the whole NFL thing was over his head. For whatever reason. Nothing personal, you know? In fact, a darn shame it wasn't working out.

Well, that was five weeks ago.

Since then, the Titans have tallied five straight victories behind the Vince Young no one but his own family thought even existed (anymore). [NOTE: If any Titans fan actually dares to tell you that they knew Vince was going to step up like he has, please stare at their nose. Just stare and keep staring, 'cuz I swear to God it will grow before your very eyes.]

Vince Young had officially returned to the NFL before the last Sunday in November. But what he did on Sunday, against the Arizona Cardinals, was orchestrate a 99-yard comeback drive even Arizona Cardinal fans had to watch with some modicum of admiration and warm fuzzies. Comebacks like this are why idiots like me watch a bunch of grown men do shit to their bodies that gladiators and Spartans see and go, like, "OMG why wud u do that 2 urself? LOLz!"

Most pundits are proclaiming Brett Favre's run with the Vikings to be "The NFL Story of 2009," but if Vince and his boys can pull off a 6th straight by knocking off Peyton's undefeated Colts next week, I'll officially announce this "The Year of The Vince."

The Vince Victory, November 29, 2009


Our school's own Titans savant, a man we lovingly call The Viper, declared it the third-best game in Titans history, and that didn't even count the dramatic Super Bowl loss.

SIDE NOTE: Oh, and by the way? Enjoy what we know as "professional football" while you can. This growing concern and focus on concussions? They'll spell the end to football as we know it. The dudes in charge of the system, having served loyally as the stoolies, like their pro-tobacco "scientist" predecessors, finally had to resign. Like the Shrew, they were calling the sun the moon, and too many important people were fed up. Once you start down this path, the path of acknowledging just how much serious damage football does to men's brains, the sport will have no choice but to adjust.

For Vince, who ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer, I only hope the changes go slowly and give him a few more years to shine, because the dude is fun to watch. Better yet, watching a guy return from the brink (of unemployment? of sanity? of glory days?) is precisely why so many of us are drawn to sports. And damn if anything should get in the way of our fascinations.

"All Kinds of Time" is perhaps the coolest ballad of a football player in alternative rock history. "Only the Young" is me desperately trying to be clever and failing miserably. I also wanted to enjoy bragging that I've posted two Journey songs in the last two months.

Can We Clone Dolly?

Cologne - Dolly Parton (mp3)
Knockers - The Darkness (mp3)

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

America should clone Dolly. Not the sheep, mind you. Dolly Parton.

I'm being totally serious. Dolly is, as best I can figure, the greatest Renaissance Man of the modern world. It just so happens that the greatest Renaissance Man of the modern world has a set of 40DD breasts attached to her front side.

Dolly Parton has managed to prove her prowess as a songwriter, a singer, an actress, a business manager, a philanthropist, and perhaps more than all of these, as a marketing genius. And in all of these various endeavors, she has not merely succeeded, but succeeded wildly:

• 37 awards from BMI for her songwriting;
• 26 #1 hits;
• 40 Top 10 Country albums;
• 42 Grammy nominations;
• (at least) 2 Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.

And then there's Dollywood. Dollywood turned what was once Silver Dollar City (a.k.a. struggling) into one of the most successful theme parks in the country, and can be credited as the single most important factor in turning Pigeon Forge from a Gatlinburg afterthought into its own destination for millions of white people every year (and a few dozen minority families). I can mock Pigeon Forge and Dollywood, but I can't deny its success.

She's been in the public eye since 1967 when she jumped on The Porter Wagoner Show, and she's hardly left it a day since.

Some of my dreams are so big they would scare you.

If, as Keyser Sose once said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist," then Dolly's greatest trick has been to ride the train of fame and fortune and celebrity for four decades without ever getting irreversably slimed by her own publicity.

Perhaps she's done this the good ol' fashioned way, through squeaky-clean livin'. She's been married to the same dude since 1966, and they don't have children, and she constantly leads us to believe they're happy and content with her on the mountaintop and him hidden in a very private life. Hey, whatever. Whatever the woman has or hasn't done in or out of bedrooms with or without other people doesn't make a lick of difference to me (NOTE: My fellow blog partner might disagree with that... see link above). My point is, one way or the other, she's managed to avoid one of the deadliest career-killers in the business while simultaneously throwing her (always-covered) hooters out there for the world to gawk and oogle.

If I had career ambitions in politics, I would encourage Dolly to hold seminars on how to please all the people all the time.

She's one of the wealthiest women in this country, and the undisputed financial Queen of Nashville, but you wouldn't know it with all her stories of humble childhoods and tin cans and rundown cars. She's sung the theme song for a movie about a pre-op transsexual but has made most of her money off the very God-fearin' Bible-thumpin' folks who hear the word "transsexual" and run screaming the other direction. While Dolly has plenty of people who couldn't care less about her, she seems to have a paucity of enemies. And the enemies she does have seem wise enough to know not to make their spats public.

If I see something saggin`, baggin` or dragin`, I`m gonna have it nipped, tucked or sucked.

Seriously, do you realize how rare all of this is?

I grant you, singin' and actin' and Dollywoodin' isn't exactly going to cure cancer or AIDS. Dolly won't go down in history as a true changer of fates like Marie Curie or anything. But the woman has managed to remain on the radar of pop culture consiousness for FORTY YEARS, and she's hit it in almost every way imaginable save for a Pulitzer Prize.

She's got career legs like Elvis and Marilyn and didn't need to die young to do it.

The worst things I've ever heard about Dolly Parton come out of her own mouth. She lovingly romanticizes her extremely impoverished beginnings, but she doesn't lampoon them. She jokes that her entire body is fake at this point. And although no one has accused her of being a World-Class Diva, she's admitted to having her own bad moments. She said as much when making an appearance on Larry King to defend Jessica Simpson (who got all fat and whale-like, we're led to believe).

Let me go back and repeat that. Dolly was out there defending Jessica Simpson. That's pro-bono work if ever I've seen it.

I'm not like a real person. I love being artificial. I think there`s a little magic in the fact that I`m so totally real, but look so artificial at the same time.

One of our culture's stoopidest and most enduring myths is somehow believing we can know people better just because they show up on our TV and movie screens. I betcha fewer than 200 people in the world could describe Dolly Parton's actual hair color, and I suspect fewer than that have seen her without makeup.

But Dolly offers enough of herself, this sense of amazing openness, that we buy what she's selling, metaphorically. We want to believe she's genuine in spite of the costume. She emits this aura that she's beyond being ashamed or scared, that you're a dang fool if you judge that book by its cover (even while she herself seems to think having a very intricately-mined cover is important).

The woman has made a career, a long and amazing career, out of riding every fence in the book yet coming across like she's out there running wild and fancy free. In the end, perhaps Dolly Parton's greatest gift is as a magician.

Mock her. Dislike her. Care nothing for her. But please don't dismiss what she's accomplished as anything less than stupefying.

We should clone her before she's gone forever.

"Cologne" is from Dolly's most recent album, Backwoods Barbie, produced by her own record company. "Knockers" is  from One Way Ticket to Hell... And Back. Both are available on iTunes and Amazon.com. Dolly's album is also available on eMusic.

Wherefore Art Thou, Simple Hero?

The Good Old Days - The Lodger (mp3)
Superman Song - Crash Test Dummies (mp3)
On Film I Play Myself - Tim Seely (mp3)

The American has the unmitigated gall to question what's happened to the cinematic hero of yesteryear:

I mean real heroes, unqualified heroes, not those who have dominated American cinema over the past 30 years and who can be classified as one of three types: the whistle-blower hero, the victim hero, and the cartoon or superhero.

(Seriously, you should click on that link and enjoy the read. It's a very interesting article.) 

Heck, I'll forward his theory one notch further. Most of the comic book-based superheroes who clog the screen today are no longer the simple superheroes of yesterday. Batman is one seriously psychologically discombobulated fella, leap years away from Adam West's cheeky '60s version. Iron Man is an alcoholic fighting to right the wrongs of decades of corporate irresponsibility. The Hulk is the notion of powers that are more of a burden than a blessing. The X-Men are people who are pushed to the fringes and feared.

The last Superman movie failed miserably, yet Superman and (possibly) Captain America are the only two heroes that, at least for a large chunk of their existences, were fairly simple and clean heroes. They carried few deep, dark secrets. Their aims were simple and true (and quite similar): Fight for truth, justice and the American Way.

The point of all three of the kinds of hero in which Hollywood has specialized over the last 35 years has been to make sure that heroism can continue to exist only on a plane far removed from the daily lives of the audience. It is hard not to speculate that this is because of a quasi-political aversion on the part of filmmakers to suggesting to the audience that real-life heroism was something to which it, too, could aspire.

While I agree with the essence of Bowman's argument -- that golly, it sure would be peachy-keen if we could have some fellas up on the big screen who were pure role models for how to be a Stand Up Guy in today's wacky world -- I can't help but confess that nothing about characters that simple appeals to me.

I prefer Unforgiven, where you realize that Gene Hackman's Little Bill, who's supposed to stand for justice, actually stands for something a little more egotistical, frightening and rash. Where Clint Eastwood's William Munny was a lawless man who'd found the righteous path, went on a fairly chivalrous errand to earn much-needed money, and then reverted to his more evil ways when he stumbles upon the kind of flawed justice that ruins the lives of mostly decent people.

In fact, William Munny isn't that terribly far from Batman. They both give in a little to their darker natures, sacrificing something of their own souls in the name of a higher and more aspirational sense of justice. The reason we don't have simple hero figures is because we know better. We know that being a hero comes at a cost. It requires sacrifice. Sometimes that sacrifice is in relationships, and sometimes it's safety. Whatever the price, it's always there, and it's always significant. Most superheroes sacrifice intimate relationships, must hide their identities. Even the greatest movie "simple" hero ever, Atticus Finch, had to pay a steep price for his principles.

As much as I love Atticus, though, I've always been more fascinated with the conflicted hero, the one who has just as much potential to do the wrong thing as the right. Characters who actually come to two paths in the wood and... awww, you know the rest of it.

Some examples, if you want to check out some of my favorite conflicted-hero flicks (non-superhero version): Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight. The East German policeman in The Lives of Others. Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King. Topher Grace in In Good Company. Edward Norton in American History X. Ben Affleck and Samuel Jackson in Changing Lanes. The whole cast of Galaxy Quest.

Then there is Bowman's conclusion:

Without this belief in a community where power is not antithetical to the good and the decent but the means of its advancement, (no films) of our own time will ever be able to give us any but a debased sort of heroism.

Sadly, it's difficult to disagree with him. But... have you tried to watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington lately? You might as well watch The Wizard of Oz, because Jimmy Stewart's Jefferson Smith is just as fictional in our current world as the Tin Man or the Good Witch.

As all movie-based debates should, this one ultimately falls around Jimmy Stewart. Do you prefer the imperfect heroes from It's a Wonderful Life or Rear Window and Vertigo, or would you rather have Mr. Smith, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Lin McAdam from Winchester '73?

Either way, as Bowers rightly acknowledges, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has enough simple heroism and conflicted heroism to make either side happy.

"The Gold Old Days" is from Life is Sweet. "On Film I Play Myself" is from Funeral Music. Both albums are available on Amazon.com's mp3 downloads site and iTunes. "Superman Song" is from the first album by Crash Test Dummies, The Ghosts That Haunt Me. It ain't avilable either place.